CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A 12-member jury has convicted a Kanawha County man of possessing and distributing child pornography.
Leo Smith, Jr., 21, of St. Albans, was on trial after allegedly having more than 600 images of child pornography on his cellphone. Following deliberations by the jury on Thursday and Friday, Smith was found guilty on distribution and exhibiting of material depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Smith was arrested in May 2024 in Dunbar following Kanawha County sheriff’s deputies performing a traffic stop. There was added scrutiny in the area following the Shawnee Sports Complex shots-fired incident nearby, and Smith’s phone was collected for evidence. Deputies said they found numerous images and videos showing underage girls in sexually explicit content during examination of his device.
Smith will be sentenced on November 13. He faces between five and 15 years in prison.
During closing arguments on Thursday, Kanawha County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Ryanne Ball told the jury that Smith “knew exactly what he was doing” and the child porn content on his phone was not there by accident.
Meanwhile, Smith’s attorney, John Sullivan, argued that there were some missteps after the phone was seized. The prosecution admitted that Smith’s phone and another phone were put into the incorrect envelopes during the investigation. Sullivan said that there was no testimony that connected Smith to the phone discovered.
“We never even saw that the phone was in his front pocket, his back pocket, or his sweatshirt pocket. We don’t even know where the phone came from,” Sullivan said.
Ball told the court that Smith knowingly exploited children that were being abused.
“While the children who were abused, violated, and exploited in those videos were innocent, Leo Smith is not,” she said.